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Friday, November 12, 2004
A Study In Passion And “Cool”
Your Curmudgeon had a strange experience this morning. His group is part of a larger, project-oriented software department which meets every Friday for general status review. Now and then, the department head will use that meeting to introduce some question or topic for general consideration and input from the troops. Today was such a day. The question was: “Do employee appreciation events (e.g., company parties and comparable special events) have a positive effect on employee morale?”
As you might expect, most of the other engineers there mumbled something ambiguous and noncommittal. Your Curmudgeon did not. Almost without intending to, he lit off on a grand and passionate tirade about how “employee appreciation events” missed the whole point of employee morale, that morale is not about time-delimited events intended to compensate for the travails of one’s job, but rather about the time one spends actually doing it, and whether the holistic experience is interesting, exciting, and comfortable—in short, whether the employee can be induced to love his work.
The reactions were mind-expanding. The department head was stunned—wide-eyed, open-mouthed, speechless, and unable to continue. The other engineers and group leaders were distributed across a spectrum that ranged from baffled to resentful.
Probably the most piercing reaction came from one of your Curmudgeon’s own group members, an older man about a year from retirement. He characterized the meeting as “a complete waste of time, pure bull****.”
In some ways, this seems consistent with what your Curmudgeon knows of himself and of most other working people. As a rule, engineers are embarrassed to admit their enthusiasm for their work. Most employees of any sort would be unwilling to tell their supervisors that they love their jobs and have committed to them voluntarily; it would seem a stick to beat them with at some unspecified future time. But there’s more, apparently stemming from the societal worship of “cool.”
Passion of any sort is widely regarded as embarrassing. A raised voice is an unacceptable disordering of the social norm. A Juggernaut-like charge into difficulty, with the intent of smashing obstacles flat by sheer power of will, is considered disrespectful toward one’s more restrained colleagues. It’s “uncool.”
The “cool” phenomenon is a promotion of disengagement over enthusiasm. “Be cool, man.” Don’t commit yourself. Don’t invest your emotions. Don’t let anyone know that there’s something that lights your boilers, charges your condensers, or gets you greased and ready to kick ass.
Your Curmudgeon, despite his scholarly demeanor, is anything but detached, anything but “cool.” He has much more animation and much less inhibition in him than the average guy. He’s a fighter and a lover. He’s most definitely “uncool,” and always has been.
But it’s not “in” to be “uncool,” to pledge one’s life, fortune and sacred honor, to lead charges and build barricades, to declaim on subjects such as love, commitment, and passion for one’s work. Such a recognition can leave a passionate person feeling very much alone.
Do the “cool” folks have any idea how they’re shortchanging themselves?
Your Curmudgeon is an old man by the standards of the engineering trade. Most of his departmental colleagues are in their twenties and thirties. It feels massively wrong to outmatch them so on the field of passion. But there’s no denying the facts.
Peer pressure might have had something to do with it. In sober retrospection, it almost certainly did. Large meetings are like that. Embarrassment at being lifeless and unexceptional when an oldster was an uninhibited firebrand probably had something to do with it, too.
In one sense, it was saddening, but in another, it reminded your Curmudgeon how much he has to be thankful for.
Our passionate moments are the times when we’re most alive. The rejection of passion in favor of the slightly bored, can’t-arouse-me demeanor known as “cool” that’s held the favor of the youth culture for God knows how long now is a poorly disguised rejection of life itself. Its incongruity against the surging fire of life that burns in the body and brain of a young adult is an irony that defies capture in a net of words.
Your Curmudgeon will continue to engage himself. He’ll continue to sing in the car. He’ll charge up the hill with his torch and his pitchfork whenever the fit takes him. And he’ll be glad that his is a personality unmarred by “cool.”
Let the Limbo people, the willfully disengaged and uncommitted ones, the gray souls who prefer a twilight world in which there’s neither true life nor true death, have their “cool.” They’ll never know what they’ve missed. More’s the pity.
Comments
Thanks Fran,
I thought that I was the only one who still has passion (though I’m not that naive). Every task is a chalange, and has been forty years.
The young ones, I still can work their asses off. Has it made me rich? Naw, but I am content.
-greg-
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/12/2004 at 08:15 PMAnother spooky wave length thing, but on a related, but different topic.
I, too, hate reward or recognition ceremonies of any kind. I find them embarrassing. The only thing I want from my work is a paycheck. I don’t mind an occasional “thank you, that was terrific” or “I really appreciate that you gave up your [fill in blank whatever] to get this project done on time.”
I’m not five years old. Actually, I think I hated gold stars, even when I was five.
There are folks, however, that really dig this crap. But I think most just attend and accept the gold pin, plastic laminate certificate, or attend the freakin’ BBQ (that occurs on your off time, of course) without saying anything.
If they want to reward us for something exceptional (other than actually doing the work you’re paid to do), how ‘bout a raise or a bonus, eh? Divvy up the money they spend on this nonsense and send us the money.
Bully on ya!—for all the reasons you mentioned.
Posted by Mrs. du Toit on 11/12/2004 at 09:31 PMDear Fran
May I hug you for these words, pal?
Cheers
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/13/2004 at 07:32 AMIn re rewards: dittos, several times over. Too cool to fool - too cool to care. Cool, another way of enjoying ennui.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/13/2004 at 09:17 PM
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